Soccer is a conspiracy that saps the essence from Canadian youth. Moreover, the fan base for international soccer brazenly refers to soccer as football. The nerve!
Soccer’s assault on hockey and democracy invades schools and homes. Were that to continue, attempts to discredit the Press (enemy of the people), to defund the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and to abolish Elections Canada directly would result.
Parents steer children away from violent pursuits like football and debate. Adherents claim that soccer is safer than either of these activities, and perhaps the random running around in soccer does improve cardiovascular health. But the running around is purposeless!
Like that other abomination—cricket—soccer numbs the senses and lures Canadian viewers into a trap filled with subliminal anti-real sports messages like: home runs are corrupt displays of privileged individualism, and touchdowns are land acquisition crimes and homages to toxic masculinity and colonial imperialism, and hockey goals are violent acts of uninvited penetration.
Soccer broadcasts involve announcers and color commentators. That there is nothing to announce appears not to matter. Color? True, the uniforms are often of a color. Keen viewers may spot a hue or stripe.
Announcing a cabbage harvest would be more entertaining:
Biff Clern: Welcome to Agri-gro Stadium and Farm Collective for this evening’s exciting cabbage harvest. I’m Biff Clern, and I am joined by the best color man in the business, the erasable Marvin Function. Later Flora Anfona will contribute some annoying and irrelevant comments from down in the cabbage patch.
Marvin: Right Biff, and make no mistake about it, those cabbages have dealt with adversity, like the infamous diamondback moth, the Plutella xylostella, but they came here to sprout and grow. Cabbage farming is a team effort, and there is no I in farm. Pickers face hostile environments, but they’ll harvest those babies one head at a time. There’ll be no tanking or looking ahead to next season, no pun intended. The pickers just want to have fun, and we’ll see who executes the Xs and Os and who wants the harvest more. And Biff, it’s not over till the fat lady sings. It doesn’t get any better than this.
Biff: It doesn’t? Wow. Flora, what’s going on in the patch? Have you had a pre-harvest chat with Farmer Brown?
Flora: I’ve just had a pre-harvest chat with Farmer Brown, and he told me that there is an i in farming, the participial form of the verb to farm.
Biff: Flora, that’s the verbal form, not the participial form. In fact, farming is a gerund the way he uses it. Did he mention anything about the differences between warm and cold weather cabbage? More importantly, did he explain why that one disrespectful picker knelt during the playing of Old MacDonald?
Flora: No, Biff. Just that i thing.
Biff: (to the control booth) Fellows, run that clip of indoor seed planting. People need to know that cabbage just doesn’t grow on trees. Marvin, what about the types of cabbages? Is there more than one? Or is cabbage just cabbage?
Marvin: Biff, there’s Monmouth Red. How do they do that?
Green to red. Who knew? And Oriental. Asian is the preferred PC nomenclature now although bok choy sounds pretty darn Oriental.
Biff: Sounds Oriental. What about the uses of cabbage?
Marvin: Well, there’s Slaw. There’s Stuffed Cabbage. Sauerkraut. Kim Chi.
Corned Beef and Cabbage …
Biff: Hold on Marvin, I see they are beginning the harvesting.
Those heads are pretty close together now, but they were planted about a foot and a half apart. The pickers are moving swiftly up the rows, slicing precisely, and leaving portions of the stems exposed.
Marvin: Biff, they do that so more cabbages will grow from the same plants!
Biff: Amazing!
Marvin: It’s a team effort, Biff, there’s no I in harvest.
Biff: Let’s bring Flora in. Flora, whataya got?
Flora: I just spoke with Farmer Brown. He says there’s an i in harvesting.
Case closed. There is more action, more drama, more plant biology, more fodder for syntactic behavior and grammatical structure analysis in the picking of cabbage than in a month of soccer events.
And there is nothing more Canadian than golabki.
The photo of Chuck honoring cabbage and disparaging soccer was taken by Tami Waters, excellent photographer and staff member at Health Directions, West Columbia, SC,
